and the negative road was Mysticism blindfolded. No fruitful
reconciliation between philosophy and piety could be thus achieved.
The decay of scholasticism put an end to these attempts at compromise.
Henceforward the mystics either discard metaphysics, and develop their
theology on the devotional and ascetic side--the course which was
followed by the later Catholic mystics; or they copy Erigena in his
independent attitude towards tradition.

In this Lecture we are following the line of speculative Mysticism,
and we have now to consider the greatest of all speculative mystics,
Meister Eckhart, who was born soon after the middle of the thirteenth
century.[234] He was a Dominican monk, prior of Erfurt and vicar of
Thuringen, and afterwards vicar-general for Bohemia. He preached a
great deal at Cologne about 1325; and before this period had come into
close relations with the Beghards and Brethren of the Free
Spirit--societies of men and women who, by their implicit faith in the
inner light, resembled the Quakers, though many of them, as has been
said, were accused of immoral theories and practices. His teaching
soon attracted the attention of the Inquisition, and some of his
doctrines were formally condemned by the Pope in 1329, immediately
after his death.

The aim of Eckhart's religious philosophy is to find a speculative basis
for the doctrines of the Church, which shall at the same time satisfy
the claims of spiritual religion. His aims are purely constructive, and
he shows a distaste for polemical controversy. The writers whom he
chiefly cites by name are Dionysius, Augustine, Gregory, and Boethius;
but he must have read Erigena, and probably Averroes, writers to whom a
Catholic could hardly confess his obligations.[235] He also frequently
introduces quotations with the words, "A master saith." The "master" is